After two years of being rated the community with the lowest crime rating in the country, Colonie's rankings in an annual survey by CQ Press have dropped. The town now ranks seventh nationwide and sixth in its population category, communities between 75,000 and 99,000 people.

Heider said Colonie actually saw a 0.5 percent decrease in those crimes during the year used for the rankings, but other towns saw steeper declines. Fishers, Ind., took over as the community with the fewest major crimes per resident.

Colonie saw a jump in high-profile crime in 2011, but Heider said the number of major crimes still declined slightly.

On July, 21-year-old Agostino Jubrey died during a shootout with police at his 2 Leach Ave. home. Jubrey had fired on officers who responded to a call of a disturbance at his home. A coroner has not determined whether the fatal shot was fired by police or by Jubrey himself.

In August, a man was charged with stabbing his 23-year-old girlfriend to death in the Super 8 Motel on Central Avenue. Rupert B. Alberga, 29, is charged with second-degree murder in that case.

A few days later, a woman shot her boyfriend to death in what police said may have been a reckless but accidental homicide. Vanessa Ortiz was charged with manslaughter.

And in October, a man who police say went on a violent rampage at a gym died after being shocked with a stun gun by police. Chad Brothers, 32, of Troy, was found to have steroids in his system that police said may have led to a case of agitated delirium.

"After this summer, people probably would have thought our crime rate was high," he said. "Our robberies are down, our assaults are down, our burglaries are down. We still think we have a pretty good thing going in the town of Colonie."

He said many suburban communities that border cities deal with crimes from people who come from outside their borders. Some 70 percent of those arrested in town are not Colonie residents, he said.

The murder case from the motel last August is not a reflection of life in the community, he said.

"That was going to happen wherever they had laid their heads that night," he said. "I'd be more concerned if we had two or three stranger homicides."